" He wasn’t just placing himself at risk; he was putting his self at risk, the same self that Thoreau thought was worth defending and protecting, the self whose primacy Emerson had argued for. (They’d read “Civil Disobedience” and “Self-Reliance” in her eighth-grade class.) The young, she claimed, were always being asked to risk who they really were, deep down, before they’d even had the opportunity to become acquainted. In her view it was wrong to ask them to gamble something they didn’t even know they possessed, much less what it might be worth. "

― Richard Russo , Everybody's Fool (Sully #2)